The electric vehicle charging point company POD Point raised £267,750 during its recent Open Charge Mini Bond crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube, according to a recent email sent to EV Obsession and CleanTechnica.
The company actually managed to notably surpass its target for the campaign, which was £250,000, hitting the 107% mark for that target. The campaign saw 119 different investors put money into the company.
The mini bond crowdfunding campaign — which will pay 8% per annum (doled out quarterly) in interest — was accompanied by a larger equity campaign, which aimed to raise £1.5 million.
The email sent to EV Obsession provides more details:
The £250k bond is being used as an entirely new way of financing electric vehicle charging points; it will be used to fund the initial roll out of the company’s new public charging network, POD Point Open Charge. Open Charge sets new benchmarks in reliability and makes electric vehicle charging more accessible through intuitive web and mobile apps. In response to driver feedback Open Charge no longer require the use of RFID cards.
…POD Point helps people adopt clean transport in their everyday lives because they believe travel shouldn’t damage the earth. To act on this belief they have set themselves an ambitious target of putting a POD Point everywhere a plug-in vehicle driver stops for an hour or more.
POD Point has grown from £1.9, to £4.5 to £6.5 million turnover in the last 2 years. It has shipped over 20,000 charge points and supplied over 10 million miles of electric motoring. This rapid growth has earned the company a spot in the 2015 Sunday Times Tech Track 100 list of the UK’s fastest growing tech companies.
The CEO and founder of POD Point, Erik Fairbairn, commented: “We hit our target of £250k thanks in part to EV enthusiasts, but also from people with a desire to put a smaller investment into creating a cleaner environment. At POD Point we’re huge fans of crowdfunding as a way to help us grow into the future and let others share in our mission.”